In-depth study of Mollivirus sibericum, a new 30,000-y-old giant virus infecting Acanthamoeba
Matthieu Legendre, Audrey Lartigue, Lionel Bertaux, Sandra Jeudy, Julia Bartoli, Magali Lescot, Jean-Marie Alempic, Claire Ramus, Christophe Bruley, Karine Labadie, Lyubov Shmakova, Elizaveta Rivkina, Yohann Coute, Chantal Abergel, and Jean-Michel Claverie
PNAS (2015), vol. 112, E5327-E5335
This paper investigates an ancient virus that was discovered in the Siberian permafrost, and shown to still be infective. It is a very large spherical virion (0.6-µm diameter) enclosing a 651-kb GC-rich genome encoding 523 proteins.
The proteome of purified Mollivirus particles is associated with up to 230 proteins, each of them detected by the identification of at least two different peptides using tandem mass spectrometry. The proteome of the particle revealed two main features: the absence of an embarked transcription apparatus and the unusual presence of many ribosomal (and ribosome-related) proteins.
In addition the authors examined the variation of expressed functions and proteins occurring in A. castellanii infected by Mollivirus by performing a series of analyses at regular intervals throughout the whole virus replication cycle. A description of the workflow and the mass spectrometry data have been deposited in PRIDE - PXD002374 and PXD002375 |